Hut in the mountains 1911

Nicholas Roerich made this landscape, Hut in the Mountains, with tempera, likely in the early 20th century, and just look at the movement of the paint! I bet that Roerich felt dwarfed by the scale of the landscape, the same way I do when I'm trying to paint something. He must have looked and looked at that little wooden hut, perched among all those big rocks, with a lone tree looking on. Notice how he used color to organize everything. The rocks are cool blues, the sky and path a warm, inviting yellow. Roerich was part of a larger movement of artists who were using simplified forms and symbolic colors to convey a deeper spiritual connection to the natural world. It reminds me of the Canadian painter Emily Carr, who also painted landscapes with a kind of mystical intensity. Painting is always a conversation across time and space. We see, and we respond, and we try to find our own little hut somewhere in the mountains.